What is AUGE?

AUGE, officially recognized as a technical community by Microsoft (Https://goo.gl/ueqrAr), aims to boost Access as a working tool in Spain and to spread the word about the program’s potential uses, new features, and innovations, via both a monthly online meeting and a cycle of lectures it hosts in Madrid every year.

What took place at the event?

The 2018 event, just held, brought together different aspects: technical innovations that can be integrated into Access (Miguel "Neckkito"); using Access in the daily management of a business, from the perspective of someone who is not an expert programmer (Arturo Diaz); different technical elements of Access, such as the Ribbon and integration with Excel (Juan Carlos Gomez); visual improvements and menus (Antonio J. Martínez); and finally, technical elements that, while not directly applicable to Access, help to position it within the current environment of Microsoft innovations (Sergio Hernández).

A gift from the Microsoft Access team and Microsoft Ibérica

To kick off the day, we had a surprise: the MS Access team was kind enough to prepare a video showing attendees some of the most innovative features that have been developed for MS Access over the past year, including the new help and product feedback systems, and even more exciting, the new charts and graphs, with their powerful and improved performance. The Spanish audience was delighted with and grateful for this contribution from the product team, as well as the Microsoft backpacks handed out to everyone as a gift from Microsoft Ibérica!

Speakers and papers, part 1

Turning to the content presented by the speakers, the first presentation was given by Miguel "Neckkito," Access MVP and President of AUGE, who spoke about how to integrate one of the Cognitive Services, called QnA Maker, into Microsoft Access through an artificial intelligence help system using a REST API. This system allows MS Access users to ask a natural-language question on a form, and then receive an answer that resolves whatever issue they’re having. And if the system can’t answer the question, the system allows the user to notify the administrator of the incorrect response so that they can use that information to better train the system.

A second surprise

One invited guest at the conference was Carlos Quintero, creator of the well-known application MZ-Tools. Carlos has been a faithful attendee at these meetings since the year 2016, where he was the speaker. And this year, he came bearing gifts: he surprised all of this year’s attendees with a license of the latest version of MZ-Tools.

Speakers and papers, part 2

Arturo Díaz, entrepreneur and founder of his own tax consultancy, as well as amateur MS Access programmer, explained the system his consultancy uses to manage his clients’ financial information. His system, which collects and manages information through a central MS Access application, along with different applications installed in each one of its clients, all connected via SharePoint lists, turned out to be an ingenious system of document management and accounting automation. Arturo's paper truly showed what can be achieved with Access, even if one is not an expert programmer.

Next, Antonio J. Martínez, developer of Abogados MF, an application for the management of law firms and attorneys (http://www.abogados-mf.es/) and currently a developer in TS Levante, specializing in MS Access + Azure, showed us his solution for resizing an MS Access application that adapts to various screen resolutions, plus an ingenious menu system without any need to use the MS Access Ribbon.

Second break, and speakers and papers part 3

After taking a break to stretch our legs, we are glad to see that the audience’s interest has not waned: all attendees return to their seats when it is announced that Juan Carlos Gomez, founder and creator of “Cont@bot,” a management software solution for small and medium businesses (http://www.contabot.com/), will show us a system – using his application – for adding new features to the Ribbon, personalized by a runtime application, with new options emerging in real time as the user modifies configuration options – and without having to restart MS Access!

Finally, Sergio Hernández, computer engineer, certified as an MCPD for Sharepoint 2010 and MCSD for Web Applications, and currently Principal Team Leader for development teams at the technology consultancy ENCAMINA (Https://www.encamina.com) – noted for its developments in Microsoft products – left the audience in awe with a superb explanation of the power of combining PowerApps and Flow as an entry point to cloud technologies, and provided a fascinating demonstration of a Cognitive Service that recognizes images based on characters from Marvel superheroes and DC Comics... A luxury to end a session in the most entertaining way possible.

Food and networking

After the cycle of lectures in the morning, the attendees all shared a meal in a nearby restaurant, where there were conversations of all kinds around MS Access, professional contacts were established, and attendees debated – in a friendly way – their positions on how each one does their work in Access.

Indeed, the mealtime conversation is so lively that it practically runs into dinner, which the people who have decided to spend the night in Madrid attend. The conversation topic of the dinner: MS Access, as it could not be otherwise.

Summary of the event and how to participate in the community

The event as a whole could not have been more satisfactory: we congratulate the organization and enthusiastically hope it will be repeated next year. With these results we believe we can establish this conference on a regular cycle. We want to expand the number of conferences in the future, and increase not only the number of attendees, but also the number of people belonging to the MS Access community in Spain.